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Excellent stuff from Paul today; we made steady progress through this last night and completed it without having to look anything up, so I think the difficulty’s about right. My particular favourite is MORGAN FREEMAN but there are lots of satisfying clues.

GASP = “to take a breath” around [ai]R. “inspire” can mean “to breathe in (something)”, indicating inclusion here – usually see you see it used the other way round (i.e. “to infuse into”), but both are fine.

11.

CATHODE RAY

ODER = “river” in CATHAY = “China”; the last one we got, with a lovely definition – a CATHODE RAY (as used in television sets) concentrates electrons into a fine beam.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 9:17 am and is filed under Guardian.
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Tnanks mhl – some good fun here. The clue 20/2dn reads “..where rabbits mad..” but would surely be better as “where rabbits are mad” – perhaps a misprint? (Unless “mad” is being used in the old verbal sense, as in “far from the madding crowd”.)

Thanks mhl. This was a lovely puzzle. 20,2 was the first one I got, and one of my favourites, along with 12,10. I also thought 24dn was very funny. 13dn was the one that caused me the most trouble and I had to check a number of letters before I got the wordplay.

The trafites (Nick): I don’t think the problem is that it’s a more general class (since that’s the standard direction without “perhaps”, “maybe”, etc.) but that “where rabbits” doesn’t make sense for WARREN whereas “where rabbits are” would, as Andrew suggests.

Andrew: I can’t decide between your explanations, since either there’s double duty of “mad” or there’s a missing “are” – I think the latter’s more likely, since the surface reads better as well…

Nick@5; I don’t think the clue needs to “define” the part of the wordplay.
You could use, for example “pet” to suggest “dog”, despite the fact that it could also be “cat”, “goldfish” etc.
(Different when it comes to defining the answer, though, I think).

mhl,
Sorry, I think I got my example the wrong way round. Should have been “dog” to define “pet”…
I was just thinking that, after some recent comments, “clues by example” were frowned upon round these parts.

I was just wondering if there was some sort of ‘nina’ going on here, but all I can find is Morgan and Warren are both 72 this year – different birth dates though, and looking at the films they have been in, there appears nothing else in the grid?

Had my usual medicated doze through this and despite that still nearly finished, so I must be getting back slowly. It wouldn’t be fair to comment on the overall quality under the circumstances, but there were a few “oh no” responses. But still, that’s part of the fun innit?

Since when, and in what dialect, does “itif” (in “aperitif”) serve as a homophone for “of teeth”? I’ve got a tooth missing and it hasn’t caused me to mumble. If it did, it is difficult to imagine it would come out as “itif”, (iteef). Come on…

“A truly wonderful and clever puzzle (from one of the Bletchley mob)”. What does this mean? My understanding of “the Bletchley mob” is that they were codebreakers who, through their brilliance, helped shorten WW11…

Al, I have to say that was one the ones I went “Oh no” at. And if you ask around here you’ll know I rarely take the side of the setter. So I think I must be going soft or something as I’m going to do some setter
defending!

I think the justification is that the ? is used. In my understanding of the lexicon of crosswords (so we’re on shaky ground already)the ? has two uses, 1)homophone indicator and 2) “I’m being a bit naughty and bending things here”. This one seems to serve both purposes, maybe that is wrong, I leave it to others to advise, but it is why I didn’t object to it, just went “oh no”.

We, the Trafites are from Pompey, and although Lorrain speaks better English than I do (with little prononced Pompey accent), I have the Pompey slang accent (a bit like cockney) ‘dain tain raynd the raynd-about’ (down town round the round-about).

‘A pair of teeth’ is super, and I laughed when I got it… and it’s two teeth too. 8-(E

I got APERITIF from the checking letters and didn’t spot the homophone (what’s new? I never do — and Spoonerisms are also another bugbear) but my daughter got it and laughed like a drain. She’s dead chuffed because she’s got lots of this one out and it’s a Paul, also saw the humour of Perm and Warren Beatty.

Al Streatfield: The Bletchley bit referred to a comment posted here about the Tuesday puzzle, where the term ‘Bletchley Park’ was used to disparage excellent setters such as, I suspect, Paul, Araucaria & Enigmatist.

I managed to get APERITIF straight away [but it still made me laugh] having last year taken part in ‘Me and My Girl’, which has the lines:
‘Aperitif, Sir?’
‘No, thanks, I’ve already got some.’ – or something like that.

Al Streatfield: if you say APERITIF to yourself, I think it comes out as more like ‘…ateef’ – or it does when I say it! It certainly worked in the show.

Great blog of a great puzzle. Thanks, mhl.

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